Winning the Elusive Marquee-Brand Customer Advocate
The marketing head of an ambitious technology firm recently shared with me a vexing problem: Apple was one of their customers. But the executive and her team could essentially tell no one. The restrictions that Apple placed on them were that airtight. It’s one of the sweetest moments a business can have: landing a marquee-brand […]
Customer Experience 101: There is no such thing as a ‘standard customer’
In the engagement between a customer and an organisation, there are several points of contact. These may be different departments, or even different touchpoints from the same department. In this age when customers—the ultimate endpoint of any business—are just as connected as the employees of any large enterprise, monitoring and making sure that the enormous […]
How to Focus a Customer Experience Transformation on Business Growth
In 2015, Finastra (at the time, called Misys)—a global banking software firm based in London—decided to pursue a compelling opportunity: to expand its business within its client banks. The firm seemed quite prosperous, with a client list that included 46 of the 50 largest banks in the world. But it’s penetration into many of these […]
Actively Including Your Customers
In my last article, we saw how a Total Customer Experience (TCE) approach to business operations is critical if you want to get serious about delivering a successful customer experience. Legacy business operations tend to be too siloed, and too focused on business objectives to the exclusion of customer needs. Here, we’ll look at an […]
Two Cold Call Case Studies: Why Your Cold Calls Aren’t Working
I believe that cold calls are quite important as part of an overall sales strategy. How they are done, however, determines their success. If the goal of the call is to gather data, share product information, start a conversation, or make an appointment, the odds are that the outcomes will be less than successful: sellers claim over […]
How to create a great buying experience for your prospects
Let’s say you need to buy new tires for your car. You spend time researching, find the right ones, and head to the store to buy them. When you get there, someone tries to upsell you on more expensive tires and keeps you chatting much longer than you wanted. Even when you’ve told him that […]
Sales Consultants are the New Reps
We live in a world where customers spend hours consuming tweets, scrolling through Facebook, conducting Google searches, and reading blogs.
How to See Past Blind Spots in Business
The phrase “Blind Spots” is common in our interpersonal lives, but the idea is equally applicable in business. In personal situations, blind spots occur when we have behavior we may not see ourselves (but others do), and it is often used in relationship situations, when we aren’t aware of our patterns. In business, blind spots are equally […]
